Vegetable Curry Recipe

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This Indian vegetable curry recipe can be crammed full of hidden vegetables, which earns it a massive thumbs up from me when I am meal planning for the family.

You might be concerned about children not liking spicy food, but in my experience many of them like much stronger food than we would expect.

And even if you are stuck with some family members who like it hot and others who don’t, this recipe will keep both hungry hoards happy.

It also provides a really flexible base for a range of different, from-the-freezer, healthy meals that can be easily adapted to meet the demands of both meat eaters and veggies.

I don’t put anything in the curry apart from huge quantities of seasonal veg and spices but then serve it with for example, quickly grilled lamb or fish or a can of chick peas or beans.

The meat or fish won’t absorb as much of the curry flavour as it would in a meat or fish curry but cooked separately means you can – critically – blend up and hide all the veggies.

It also satisfies younger children who like meat, sauce and rice separate on their plate.

Obviously, you can serve it with rice, but we also make super quick pittas from a wedge of bread dough in the freezer. These are yummy dipped in big steaming bowls of curry.

I do always try to serve our vegetable curry with yoghurt, as I think it tastes so much better that way, but also because the adults can add a little garam masala to it to spice their curry up.

Ingredients for vegetable curry

These are the ingredients for a family of four but I always batch cook it in my Le Crueset with 3 cans of tomatoes and as many veg as I can possibly cram in 🙂

Garlic

Ginger – I keep some frozen as you only ever need small amounts

Onion

Dried chilli – too taste

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

1 teaspoon turmeric

Garam masala – too taste

400g / 14oz can of tomatoes

Vegetable stock as needed

200g / 7oz of yoghurt (roughly)

500g of seasonal veggies

Additional spinach – not essential but I sneak it into everything I can 😉

I try to get in at least 3 or 4 different types of vegetables – we just made some with pumpkin, cauliflower, parsnip and carrot which was great. Personally, I don’t like the vegetables too sweet but if you know your kids will prefer a sweeter taste, carrot and sweet potato are good additions.

It’s also great way to get in some super vegetables like brussels that lots of people don’t like as the flavour and texture will be so well hidden.

Vegetable curry recipe

Lightly fry cumin seeds in a couple of table spoons of olive oil for a few minutes

Add chopped onion and soften for about 10 minutes

Stir in minced garlic, chopped ginger, crumbled chilli and turmeric

Add the can of tomatoes and after bringing to boil simmer for about 15 minutes

Stir in roughly chopped veg – if you want to keep some of the veg in big chunks, keep back softer veg such as cauliflower and broccoli and add towards the end

Slow cook for a couple of hours – adding a little stock as needed

Add in soft veg for 20 to 30 minutes at the end

Add in roughly chopped spinach for about 10 minutes at the end

If you’re eating some straight away – extract the portions of those who don’t like whole veg and blend them to whatever smoothness required by your picky eaters!

Serve with yoghurt and garam masala

If serving with chick peas or beans add them about 10 minutes from end, but if you’re batch cooking I wouldn’t add to the whole batch as it gives more flexibility without them.

I invariably blacken my le Crueset with this but now I have my mum’s super simple trick for getting even the blackest pan clean without scrubbing, that’s not a problem.

Find more useful recipes and meal planning ideas in our Family Food section.